# CES publishes guide to Monitoring and Evaluation on a Shoestring

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/02/18/ces-publishes-guide-monitoring-and-evaluation-shoestring/
- Published: 2011-02-18T15:30:30+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Charities Evaluation Services’ National Performance Programme has published ‘Monitoring
and Evaluation on a Shoestring’, a free guide for charities with limited budgets
who want to develop their monitoring and evaluation approach and improve their effectiveness.

The need for charities and organisations to demonstrate the difference that they
are making is only going to grow as funding pressures on the sector increase. While
many third sector organisations do monitor and evaluate their work, CES believes
that many of them are better at describing what

they do rather than the difference they make to people’s lives.

## Advertisement

 [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/)

The new guide shows that evaluation does not have to be expensive and there is a
lot that organisations can do themselves through self-evaluation.

Andy Gregg, Charities Evaluation Services Chief Executive, said: ‘Monitoring and
evaluation are an integral part of a well-run charity and should be seen as vital
tools in helping an organisation adapt and develop their services to meet need and
improve efficiency. Dynamic, effective organisations put learning and development
at the heart of their planning, and this free guide aims to help them to do so”.

The guide offers a simple but systematic approach to monitoring and evaluating. 
It can be used by trustees, staff and volunteers of third sector organisations. 
It will be particularly useful for those who have responsibility for self-evaluation
and for using the information both internally and for reporting to funders and investors.

It includes guidance on getting ready to monitor and evaluate an organisation’s 
work, explains some common evaluation terms, helps organisations to identify the
outputs and outcomes of their work, explores how to identify the data that organisations
need to collect, provides good practice guidance in collecting data, describes some
methods for collecting data and discusses how to use the data collected.

Charities Evaluation Services was established in 1990 and works with thousands of
voluntary organisations and funders of all sizes each year, strengthening their 
abilities in performance management, evaluation and quality, to support them to 
do what they do best.

The publication is free to download at

www.ces-vol.org.uk/shoestring

 * **[New CEO at Association of Charity Officers](https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/02/23/new-ceo-association-charity-officers/)**(
   23 February 2011)
 * **[Effectiveness v efficiency](https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/03/01/effectiveness-v-efficiency/)**(
   1 March 2011)
 * **[Julia's House named top charity to work for by The Sunday Times](https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/03/02/julia039s-house-named-top-charity-work-sunday-times/)**(
   2 March 2011)